Memory of a silly wild camp

The Boys

Wild are the boys
  Who could even want to make everything their toys
Wilderness is a better place than home
  Where there are no rules but their very own

Caramel's latest writing about a wild camp she had been to has brought me a reminiscence of my kiddy days when I was so crazy for camping. Two of them were particularly memorable. On one occasion, when I was fifteen going to be sixteen and just got allowed to be promoted to a Venture Scout, I went for a three days wild camp with a senior fellow boy scout and a classmate. A silly young man or in fact a kid as I was, I felt such a big shot about my being promoted to a Venture Scout so that I demanded my scout friend to get ourselves in full gears. I meant to carry with us the tools and equipment for doing some pioneering gadgets during the camping.

I even wore my neat and tidy Venture Scout uniform although I had not yet taken the oath for the promotion which would only take place after I had passed my sixteenth birthday. I demanded my senior to wear his full uniform too. We took a lot of utensils including ropes, poles, axes and knives and so on from our troop base. I decided not to bring the gas burner and would rely solely on our scout crafts to set a campfire. On the day, after having tied up my scout troop scarf with a brand new bronze bull's head woggle, I set off to that primitive and uniformed camp.

Our destination was the twin brooks ("Sheung Look Shek Kan") near Tai Long Sai Wan. Having arrived at Sai Kung, we began to take quite a long walk before we finally arrived at our camp site in the afternoon. Along the way, we bumped into a group of older young men and ladies whom we were made to believe to be teddy boys and teddy girls - judging from the way they dressed and talked. They noticed the uniforms of my friend and me and later they found it strange that there were only two of us instead of a whole troop and there was another one not in uniform. We therefore became a target of jokes.
"Hey, boy scouts! Where are you going? Lost from your fellows??"
We didn't answer them. I was in fact feeling uncomfortable with them and a little intimidated too.

It didn't take us too long to set up the tent. It had been raining the day before and it might rain anytime and so I proposed to my scout friend to dig a ditch for the tent. That was rejected by my scout brother. In fact, I was even thinking about erecting a light footbridge across the brook too. I just wanted to try all the skills that I had learned without thinking about the feasibility and the utility. In fact, those words were not part of my English vocabulary by then.

My friend did, however, agree with me to try the river bed cold storage method and so we dived into the very bottom of the river which was about 7 to 8 feet deep to try that. We put into a canteen the fresh meat that we brought with us and then put in a watertight plastic bag. We carried that food storage canteen and fixed it into the mud of the river bed. Theoretically, the low water temperature down there could preserve the freshness of the meat.

The group of teddy boys and girls came later on and set several tents just behind us. They were very noisy neighbours. There were more than ten of them and apart from their voices they had two cassette recorders which were so out of place with the nature.

We had a lot of work to do. First of all, we began to try to set a campfire. We went to the cut the trees nearby but we found that we couldn't get the woods burning, as they were wet. After a long while, we still failed to start a fire. So we had to demonstrate another scout craft -  using our scout knives, we cut a piece of wood into fine tissues. That took us a long while again. Oh it was already getting dark when we finally got the woods burning. Two girls came to me and said, "Hey, what's the trouble? Wow! Are you kidding? You are not using gas burner to cook?"
I didn't respond to that remark.
"Don't waste your time! Come to us to cook!" said the girls.
I noticed that they had already had their dinner. I just gave her a polite smile and thanked her. Out of pride perhaps and out of my fervour to try my scout craft, I insisted to do it our own way as planned, although my friends were tempted to accept the offer. More so the latter I guessed.

We had our dinner done eventually. It had taken us more than three hours. I found it delicious, though. I was sure my friends also felt the same, as we were all starving after all. Having comforted our stomach, we began to have a rest. Chatting, singing scout songs and guessing whether the meat could be preserved, we had spent the rest of the night. Our neighbours continued to be noisy even by the time we went into our tent trying to have a good sleep for the first night of our camp.

After a while (I didn't know how long), while we were all fast asleep, several guys from our neighbour came to wake us up anxiously.
"Hey fellows, please help us. Can we borrow your torches?" one of the guys said politely instead of treating us as kids.
"What happened?" we asked.
"One of the girls was missing when we went out for a night trek. We only have one torch. We need to find her quick, please!"
"Oh of course!"
We then lent the guys three torches. They ran away quickly and left their tents there unattended.

After quite a while, there came the noises again. The gang was back. They had found the missing girl. She was not injured. The guys came to return the torches to us and thanked us for our help. That was supposed to be for lending them the torches and attending to their tents which they didn't even ask. They seemed more friendly and less like teddy boys to me than before.

We woke up early in the following morning. The first sight that I saw when I got out of the tent was unbelievable. I saw that my scout senior was squatting by the side of the river. His pants were rolled down and his ass was bare, although facing the river.
"What are you doing?"
"Dropping a duce!"
"Are you nuts? You take the river for the loo? Don't you remember our food is just a few feet down there?"
"The water is flowing!"
I couldn't believe it. We had neighbours including girls. What was the matter with this guy? Anyway, luckily, our neighbours had not waken up yet.

My non-scout friend scolded him even more fiercely. That stupid guy agreed to be the one to take the canteen back up from the river, although my other friend and I weren't quite sure whether we would eat the food in that canteen. The displeasure of that unpleasant scene had upset us for a good hour.

After walking around for a while, we came back and started to cook something for our breakfast. It became easier to start a fire this time. We made some coffee and boiled a few eggs to go with our bread. After the breakfast, we had totally forgotten about what happened earlier on. Picking up the tent, we went happily together to have a mountain trekking. In the late afternoon, we came back down. We decided to change our camp site at the beach tonight. That was later proved to be a wrong choice.

At night, although we had the benefit of the a pressure kerosene lamp which we rented from a tuck shop nearby, the tent had to take the challenges of the strong wind as well as the cows wandering around in the neighbourhood. We didn't have a good sleep or any sleep at all. At a time, I really worried that we would be run over by a cow while we were sleeping. Such fear was not a totally unfounded one too!

In the following morning, we abandoned the plan to cook again. We just went to the store nearby to buy Vitasoys and sandwiches for breakfast. This would be our third and last day in this big shot camping. No spectacular pioneering work had been done, no orientation game played, no real adventures experienced. In fact, I didn't think it was worth coming. Rather disinterestedly, we left the beach and the brooks in the afternoon. We chose to walk. After we had got on to the motor way, we saw a bus passing by. We chased it and luckily although it was not the bus stop, it stopped for us. That had brought us a little fun. Before long, the bus had taken us back to the urban area. We all missed our home I guessed. I remember I was thinking that the first thing I would do back home was to - I don't know why- make myself a cup of cold lemonade.

The trip seemed to me so damn meaningless and there was not much fun, but somehow it stays in my memory. I guess there must be some reasons for that. I don't know why or perhaps I have refused to admit the true reason why. I am not sure. Bits and pieces of memories of experience form a part of a person anyhow.